Hasbro cancels D&D video game by Giant Skull

Hasbro has cancelled development of a Dungeons & Dragons video game led by Stig Asmussen, the director of the Star Wars: Fallen Order games. Bloomberg News reports that the game, under development from Asmussen’s Giant Skull studio, was cancelled less than a year after it was first announced. Per Bloomberg, Wizards opted not to “pursue an early concept” from Giant Skull, but was still taking pitches from the developer. There are apparently no hard feelings about the cancellation.

Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast are ramping up development of D&D video games, following the success of Baldur’s Gate 3. However, many of these projects have been unceremoniously cancelled, with changes in direction primarily cited as the reason for the games not being finished. The next D&D video game confirmed for release is Warlock, which will release sometime in 2027.

Wizards of the Coast told Bloomberg that it decided not to "pursue an early concept" from Giant Skull, but that it's still taking pitches from the developer. Asmussen indicated that there are no hard feelings, and that "things are good" at the studio.

 

[wicked cool]

No game is better than a bad game

 

[EthanSental]

Agreed!

 

[Hurin70]

They hit paydirt with BG3, then pissed off Larian with mass layoffs, and now we're back to this.

 

[Drew Melbourne]

No game is better than a bad game

MANY games are better than a bad game!

 

[Afroconan]

They hit paydirt with BG3, then pissed off Larian with mass layoffs, and now we're back to this.

This is not true. Swen had to correct the record both on social media and the press. Their decision not to do BG4 was because of their own projects and goals.

 

[Afroconan]

No game is better than a bad game

Yeah, for some reason this is making the rounds with the usual narrative of "WotC are fools!" when it's just them not going forward with a pitch from a 3rd party studio.

This is news because someone decided it is. I'm sure it's something that's constantly happening in the background.

 

[EternalDungeonMaster]

You can't just set out to make viral, smash hit game. That sort of happens all on its own. All you can do is work heads-down on the best game you're capable of making and hope it explodes. But that means actually releasing games. It also means that sometimes you're going to release less-then-great games.

 

[Hurin70]

This is not true. Swen had to correct the record both on social media and the press. Their decision not to do BG4 was because of their own projects and goals.

He did walk back the comments, that's for sure, but I think we need to read between the lines here. I think he would likely have been sued had he not. But I do find more telling his comments at the GDCA:

"I've been fighting publishers my entire life and I keep on seeing the same, same, same mistakes over, and over and over. It's always the quarterly profits. The only thing that matters are the numbers, and then you fire everybody and then next year you say 's**t I'm out of developers' and then you start hiring people again, and then you do acquisitions, and then you put them in the same loop again, and it's just broken."

And that's pretty much literally what's happening right now.

 

[abazaba]

Their decision not to do BG4 was because of their own projects and goals.

Yeah. If I understand correctly, the Larian team was 'done' with D&D at that point. Not in the way that they hate D&D or anything, but after all those years (from signed contract to finished product and updates) they really wanted to do something different. For example (but perhaps not a really good one), they wanted to try out new things, like changing the way combat works, but they couldn't because then it wouldn't be D&D anymore. They decided to move on to doing new things.